The Other Secret — The Wonderful Secret — A New View of Magic

How to Tune a HumanThe Other Secret — The Wonderful Secret — A New View of Magic

Many things work better when adjusted, or "tuned." We tune up our automobiles. We tune a guitar. We tune a radio. We tune radio-telescopes to spy on distant galaxies.

And so we raise the question: Could we tune a human? Could we tune ourselves to work better? Can a human be tuned?

The answer is: Yes!

And that raises another question, which is "How?" And the pathway will be discovered both in the archaic study called Magic and in Applied Psychology. We often sense, especially as thoughtful children growing up, that there *must* be something to magic. And there is something to it, though it's been a confusing mixture of truth, psychology, obscurity, charlatanism, and balderdash for hundreds of years. Kind of hard to see through the murk. But an answer to "How" can be found.

In another article (‘What is the Unconscious Mind?‘), I described how the so-called Unconscious Mind consists entirely of things learned by habit or happenstance, and which then sunk below what we call consciousness, so as to operate automatically to promote our survival.

There are many things which our culture believes are automatic and unknowing processes — such as regulating our blood pressure, remembering to breathe, regulating the salinity of our blood and the acidity of our stomach acid — and that these processes are built into the body, are automatic, and cannot be controlled.

Yet we know by observation that there are yogis who have in fact taken control of many of these processes, and so we know it can be done. But why don’t you and me have awareness of these things?

For thousands of years, systems have existed which we might call magic, or manifestation, or self-help. The common denominator of many of these systems is that they depend upon visualization.

Some folks do well with this; other people never seem to succeed.

What do you want from such a system?

You want (a) success; (b) rapid success; (c) reliable success. Just like your Ford automobile, you want it to always start and carry you down the chosen road, to start quickly, and to operate reliably as expected.

In these various systems, different factors are touted as helping to attain success, rapidity, and reliability. These include —

All too often, in our lives we find ourselves being manipulated or influenced by other men, by women, and sometimes even by the damned television.

Of course, as a kid against a schoolyard bully, perhaps the only options are the Charles Atlas course, karate classes, or a tactful withdrawal. But in later life usually we’re not influenced by physical threat.

HOW DO ‘THEY’ MANIPULATE US?

It’s done with worths, with images, and with social pressure.

If you’re being influenced this way … what that tells you is that you DO NOT actually understand how it’s happening. Oh, you may have theories and opinions about those bad people.

But if you’re still being manipulated, either “having” to go along, or even resisting but feeling upset or angry about it .. then you DO NOT fully understand how it works.

I make and sell guitars. Unusual guitars that you can play without strumming or picking, and this lets you play strings with both hands, so you can play bass strings and guitar strings at the same time. The name of this instrument is the Mobius Megatar.

Recently, a college student had inquired because he wanted to get one of our instruments. We wrote back and forth, and he was all set to go, but then he sent me this email —

“I’m sorry but the Megatar is not in the picture any more. I was coerced into buying a 2700 dollar classical guitar from a company that gives referral bonuses to the teacher who I was coerced by, so I’m left broke and on crappy terms with my main teacher for the next 3 years.

“I really wish I had the cash and time to delve into a tapstyle instrument right now, and if I could, it’d be a Mobius with Bartolini pickups, but it seems like that won’t be available for a while. With student loans and a no emergency funds (thanks to the aforementioned jerk of a teacher) I’ll be lucky if my car makes it without scheduled servicing for the next 6 months.”

What is really odd is that I got another email from another college student, in a similar situation who told me something of a similar story, that he’d been required (or perhaps urged) to get a nylon-string guitar for some upcoming course work. However, the second student seemed much less bitter.

And it got me to thinking. I can understand the disappointment he must feel.

And actually, it does sound kind of crappy behavior for the college music instructor, to push the student toward an instrument that pays the instructor a commission.

Everybody’s talking about the cult-hit movie, “The Secret,” and no wonder. The method promises to give you anything you want.

The movie has a focus on “getting stuff,” which is probably a good thing, because this focus that anyone can understand is probably one of the reasons the movie has been wildfire word-of-mouth and rapidly making its way into mainstream culture. And after all, if you’re just too darned spiritual to want some stuff for yourself, you could always manifest a bunch of stuff and give it to the poor!

For the rest of us, getting some stuff sounds just swell. And just a tiny bit of reflection brings us to the realization that we could use the same method to be, do, or have more of the things that interest and inspire us. Nothing wrong with that.

A blog that I enjoy is called “Evolving Times,” and recently the writer described the situation of being “spare-changed,” on the street.

People in my parents generation used the word “beggers” to describe people who beg on the street. Or sometimes “moochers,” “panhandlers,” or “bums.” Of course, in tiny Henrietta, Texas, where I grew up, the town was too small to have an official panhandler, so the town drunk filled in part time.

Friends of mine as I grew up didn’t seem to like the word “Begger,” though it would seem to be accurate. And I guess the phrase, “Buddy, can you spare a dime?” from that older time had mutated into “Spare change?” by the hippie period in the 1960’s.

THE SPARE-CHANGER

The writer in “Evolving Times” was describing what we’ve all felt in that situation. You’re walking along and you are suddenly asked, “Spare change?” Which as we all know, means “Do you have any spare change, that you could give to me?” (I guess those beggers are either very lazy, or they are astonishingly efficient.)

In one of the last scenes in the fun movie, “Pirates of the Caribbean,” the heroine makes a statement about the leading man. She says, lovingly, “He’s a pirate.”

As you may recall from the movie, that young man started out hating the pirates, and yet, in the course of his adventures, he’s become bolder and he has dared great things, and by golly he has become a pirate. And that’s a good thing.

The ‘Non-Conscious’ mind can regulate your body in a thousand ways (all normally below your consciousness), and the ‘Non-Conscious’ mind can automatically serve up learned actions like a tennis-serve or automatically serve up your opinion of the President or automatically make you feel anxious on a date. Some of this is swell, and some of this is occasionally awful, but the Non-Conscious mind is looking out for you as best it can, and everything it does is automatic.

If you listen to Sigmund Freud or some Psychology 101 textbooks, you may quickly form the idea that there is something called either the ‘Unconscious Mind,’ or maybe called the ‘Subconscious Mind.’

Now right there is a poser, because you might think, “Well, if it’s unconscious, then how can it be a mind?”

And if you read up on this, and if you watch dramatic movies about people who have disturbed the ‘Subconscious’ mind, you could easily get the idea that the Subconscious mind is a kind of lunatic stalker which lives inside of us, and given the right situation, it might burst out and *make* you do something … bad.

Scary, huh.

Well, it’s not like that. It’s something far simpler and less mysterious, and you’ve seen it all your life, but you didn’t think about it. Here’s what it is …